I've seen people cite The Curse as the first Charles L. Grant book. It simply isn't true. The Curse is his debut horror novel, but Grant previously published a small handful of science fiction books.
The Curse set a standard for one of the greatest careers in the horror field. I don't think it rivals his best novels: The Nestling, The Pet, The Black Carousel. It's a strong book though, featuring Grant trademarks like literate language, oodles of atmosphere, and slowly mounded dread.
I can't say when the first horror novel featuring Native American magic appeared. Masterton's The Manitou came out a few years before The Curse, so Grant doesn't get big points for originality. It did help maintain the stereotype. Books with Indian Burial Grounds (sorry, that's what they were called back then) were incredibly popular until the subgenre reached its zenith in 1984 with Pet Sematary. Indian Burial Grounds jumped the shark in '93 with the heavily-ridiculed HWA anthology, Deathport. But that's a story for another day.
The Curse had an inauspicious birth in the form of a forgotten fly-by-night paperback outfit called Major Books. It has a nondescript cover and the not-so-original tagline The EXORCIST, then...The OMEN, now...The CURSE
I felt The Curse was kind of murky as I read the first half of the novel. The characterizations are a little thin, and the action was slow to start even by Grant standards. Thankfully the book gradually, slowly, pulled me in. The tension mounted and the terror began to rise. By the final pages the suspense was pretty high. The Curse ends in an explosive way that manages to tie up the story threads and also leave the reader things to speculate upon.
The Curse will undoubtedly bore the hell out of splatterpunk lovers, but readers of Shirley Jackson and Manly Wade Wellman will probably like it. I don't recommend it to the Grant virgin, but those who enjoy his graceful style will be happy to receive The Curse.
Written by Mark Sieber
The Curse set a standard for one of the greatest careers in the horror field. I don't think it rivals his best novels: The Nestling, The Pet, The Black Carousel. It's a strong book though, featuring Grant trademarks like literate language, oodles of atmosphere, and slowly mounded dread.
I can't say when the first horror novel featuring Native American magic appeared. Masterton's The Manitou came out a few years before The Curse, so Grant doesn't get big points for originality. It did help maintain the stereotype. Books with Indian Burial Grounds (sorry, that's what they were called back then) were incredibly popular until the subgenre reached its zenith in 1984 with Pet Sematary. Indian Burial Grounds jumped the shark in '93 with the heavily-ridiculed HWA anthology, Deathport. But that's a story for another day.
The Curse had an inauspicious birth in the form of a forgotten fly-by-night paperback outfit called Major Books. It has a nondescript cover and the not-so-original tagline The EXORCIST, then...The OMEN, now...The CURSE
I felt The Curse was kind of murky as I read the first half of the novel. The characterizations are a little thin, and the action was slow to start even by Grant standards. Thankfully the book gradually, slowly, pulled me in. The tension mounted and the terror began to rise. By the final pages the suspense was pretty high. The Curse ends in an explosive way that manages to tie up the story threads and also leave the reader things to speculate upon.
The Curse will undoubtedly bore the hell out of splatterpunk lovers, but readers of Shirley Jackson and Manly Wade Wellman will probably like it. I don't recommend it to the Grant virgin, but those who enjoy his graceful style will be happy to receive The Curse.
Written by Mark Sieber
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